Drive them out

To the editor:

Congestion pricing is a money grab, plain and simple. As a policy, it represents cooperation between the two worst people in the city:

First, the cowardly and (unsurprisingly) virtually anonymous elected officials who know that it won't work to reduce traffic. Why? Because it's already known that congestion pricing does not work to reduce traffic.

London started congestion pricing a dozen years ago. Traffic didn't miss a beat there and it won't here. But it will raise a lot of money, which, of course, is their real agenda.

If they were genuinely concerned about reducing traffic and they believed their own argument that an increased cost to driving will reduce driving, then surely the inverse — reduced price of alternate means of transport —  is true, as well. Where were their arguments for reducing the price of public transportation? Where were their arguments for making public transport (subways, buses, bicycles) free during the hours of and around rush hour. Absent. 

They do not care about traffic. They want your money. They are just too cowardly to admit it.

The second group of people are less deceitful but perhaps even more selfish. They actually believe congestion pricing will reduce traffic. They just want other people not to drive. They're less interested in revenue, and more interested in living in a city that they don't have to share with other people.

Of course, the former group is happy to have the support of the latter group. It will bring in additional revenue.

But that revenue comes at the expense of working people who can't pass along the costs to others. So, what to do? Ignore the latter — they're fools and not worth anyone's time. Expose the former — make them stand up and say they support taking your money. Then drive them out.

Josh Lomask